[Cheese] Molds (sorry, long post)

[Erica Schechter]

One thing I have heard of people using as a follower is to fill the
mold with wax, let it solidify, then remove the block of wax and use
it as a follower. Haven't tried it myself though.

--Erica

On 1/12/06, dean crabtree <dean_crabtree_1958 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Brian <mavityre at comcast.net> wrote:  Does anybody know where I can get
> bigger molds? Say for 5 to 10 lbs wheels
>
> Here's my odd way of doing it:
>
> I wanted a mold for doing some larger wheels, and I found a place out of
> Oklahoma that makes stainless cheese stuff.  I asked for a quote on a three
> piece "mini-Daisy" mold which I think was 9 or 10 inches in diameter.
>
> I got the quote and after I got my heart beating again (this is afterall a
> hobby for me and not a profession) I was thinking that I could find some
> decent things to make a hoop with, but I had trouble finding something that
> would work well as a follower.
>
> My work is "sort of" in the realm of metals, and my second thought was to
> get some stainless tubing in whatever diameter I wanted, but the thing about
> buying raw stock, is th! at you must buy a whole "stick" of it just like if
> you've buying lumber.  I don't forsee needing a total of 12 feet of tubing.
>
> So then I thought maybe my local restaurant supply house might have
> something if I looked hard enough.  I was thinking maybe some of those
> steamtable inserts for holding soup, or something like that.  I'd just drill
> and deburr some holes in the bottom of one, and use another as a follower
> (they do nest, but have very steep drafts).
>
> The cost was again too great for my thinking, as I am so tight I hum in a
> breeze.  I thought about food grade plastic food containers.  I already have
> a giant tub and lid that I use for brining fowl or meats, and as a crock for
> making kraut.  I went over to the food containers.  The polycarbonite
> containers are about 3x the price of the polypro ones.  The walls were
> thick, but I wasn't sure if the plastic could wi! thstand a 50 pound
> pressing, but it was so cheap that I thought I'd give it a go.  I didn't get
> the larger size, but thought I would prove the process with a setup that
> would make a three or four pound cheese.  I got two with an inside bottom
> diameter of about 6-1/2 inches.  I know that's not much larger than what I
> could get with PVC, but my goal are some 12" parm wheels and I wanted to see
> if this idea would work.
>
> On one container, I drilled and deburred holes in the bottom and some in the
> sides, because so many pictures of hoops have holes in the sides.  I now see
> no benefit of holes in the sides, because no great amount of whey was
> discharged through them, and they just wanted to hold onto the curds too
> much.  My thinking was that if the bottom holes didn't easily discharge
> enough whey that I could then simply cut the bottom off, but I couldn't do
> it the other way around.
>
> I tried! it out on a stirred curd cheddar and it works fine.  Because it is
> a bit deep relative to the diameter, it made loading and working a butter
> muslin cheesecloth a bit cumbersome for the inital pressings, and left some
> bunched-cloth creases in the cheese.  After it held together enough I did
> the flipping upside down.  That is to say, I put the unaltered "follower"
> upside down, and draped a sterile handkerchief over the bottom of the
> follower, put the flipped cheese on it and another sterile handkerchief over
> the cheese and then the drilled "hoop" on that.  After it was all fit back
> together, the whole shebang was flipped back over and put into my press.
> (My press is like the primitive free weight design that is on the Fiasco
> Farms website.)  The thinner hankie didn't force creases into the cheese and
> it smoothed out from twenty pounds on, and it looked like a wonderful wheel.
>
> If you did it like this, you co! uld get some for a  8 - 10 pound cheese for
> about fifteen bucks.
>
> Sorry it takes me so long to get to the point, but I hope this helps.
>
> Dean C.
>
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